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Most of the world's nations have agreed to limit warming to 2°C, with a stretch goal of keeping things below 1.5°C. Since we have a good sense of how carbon dioxide drives that warming, it's possible to estimate how much more CO2 we can add to the atmosphere before those goals are exceeded. People have referred to that limit as a "carbon budget." The budget is useful, because it allows us to evaluate different ways of keeping below it. If cars are electrified by 2030, for example, it might give us more time to figure out how to handle air travel.

Now, a group of researchers has compared that carbon budget to the existing sources of emissions from fossil fuels, including power plants, industrial sources, and more. The analysis finds that we already have enough carbon-emitting power plants to push up against the limits of the carbon budget, and the number of plants in the planning stages might cause us to shoot right past it.

Running the numbers

To figure out how we're doing on the carbon budget, the researchers totaled up all the major sources of emissions, including industrial sources, cars and trucks, and power-generation plants. The annual emissions from each of these was then projected forward, accounting for things like the typical lifespan of each, their annual use (miles for cars, capacity factor for power plants, etc.), and the emissions associated with that use. You can view these as emissions we're committed to, as they'll happen unless we retire hardware before its usable lifetime is up.

Power plants, which have long lifecycles and often burn coal (which releases lots of carbon per unit of electricity), account for over half the emissions we're committed to, at 360 Gigatonnes of carbon dioxide. One of the main reasons behind this large percentage is that so much of the power-generating hardware is new, due to China and India's push to industrialize. Of China's fossil fuel plants, 79% were built after 2004, and 69% of India's were. But because China has built so many more of them, it's far and away the largest source of emissions commitments.

Industrial sources account for an additional 162 Gigatonnes of emissions. After that, most contributions are relatively minor: 64 Gigatonnes from transportation, 42 from housing, and 18 from commercial buildings. Thus, the focus on reducing emissions from electrical generation seems appropriate.

There is some good news, however. The US and EU have an older stock of fossil fuel-burning plants, so they are only committed to the neighborhood of 50 Gigatonnes of emissions. Their total of committed emissions has been shrinking since 2006. India's smaller grid means that it is only committed to about the same total as the US, and its committed emissions started dropping in 2014, as did China's. Thus, many of the trends are headed in the right direction.

Committed emissions vs. commitments

Overall, the total committed emissions add up to 658 Gigatonnes of CO2, assuming everything is operated as it has been in the past. And that's a big problem, given that it's already above the estimated carbon budget that will keep warming limited to 1.5°C. (To have better-than-even odds of staying below 1.5°C, it's estimated that we can only emit a maximum of 580 Gigatonnes.)

But things got even worse when the researchers went on to consider all the additional power plants that have been proposed or started construction. As of the start of this year, about 600GW of coal plants were planned, along with a similar capacity of natural gas-fueled generation. These would add another 190 Gigatonnes of emissions if they were completed, bringing the total to 846 Gigatonnes. If those are completed and used as normal through their lifespans, there's very little chance of limiting temperature increases to 1.5°C. In fact, we would use over two-thirds of the carbon budget for keeping temperatures below 2°C.

While this sort of analysis can be valuable, there are a number of complexities it doesn't capture. For example, transportation like cars and trucks don't make a major contribution because they typically have a relatively short lifespan. But we currently have a lot of infrastructure dedicated to producing internal combustion engine vehicles, so they're likely to remain a factor in future emissions.

In addition, as the authors note, the analysis is very sensitive to one of its assumptions: that the future infrastructure will be used in the same way it always has been. There are some signs, however, that that's starting to change. A number of plants have been closed ahead of their expected obsolescence as newer facilities have been able to operate at substantially lower costs. In addition, the increasing fraction of intermittent renewable sources has promoted the use of facilities that can respond rapidly to demand and operate at lower capacity factors.

Carbon capture

The wildcard in all of this, however, is carbon capture and storage technology. While it's widely acknowledged that capture is likely to be needed (in part because of reports like this), technology development has lagged, in part because the economics are so bad. Barring a price on carbon, that's unlikely to change. But, should the technology be developed, it has the potential to both limit the impact of these power plants and to draw carbon directly out of the atmosphere should we overshoot our targets.

Given that this analysis says we're likely to do so, that may ultimately become critical. The alternative is to incur the costs of retiring hardware before it has reached its expected obsolescence.

We need to start building nuclear too, but we aren't doing that either. Another indicator of just how serious we are about addressing the problem with everything at our disposal.

I'm generally for nuclear. I'm very much a "Damn the economics! This is important!" kind of guy. What else is government for if not spending amounts of money the private sector would balk at on projects that need to get done.

Except that a big problem with nuclear, is that even if we threw tons of money at it, we probably don't have expertise to actually get them done in time properly anyway. Look at all those stories of those plants being built where the contractors kept fucking it up. Sure, things would have been different if we hadn't swerved away from nukes decades ago, but, we are where we are now.

Lets just throw a shitton of money and people at solar and wind, we seem to be able to do that.

We need to start building nuclear too, but we aren't doing that either. Another indicator of just how serious we are about addressing the problem with everything at our disposal.

The problem is Nuclear power in its current form does present real dangers to local residents, just look at Fukushima. Other renewables, not so much.

But fusion reactors or Thorium fission reactors would be great.

No dangers to Fukushima residents. They've been very conservatively moved away to stand any chance of even a slight health risk increase.

Thorium sounds great, but good old BWRs and PWRs with containments have done more to offset CO2 emissions than any other scalable technology. And of those designs, there has only been one event that released radiation in any significance, Fukushima. That was due to improper siting and a tsunami hit on a plant that wasn't designed to take it. Simple solution.

I'm all for thorium research, but at present its not a solution.,

Build a lot of plants, costs will come down and we'll have a century of low emission , reliable generation at our hands.

We need to start building nuclear too, but we aren't doing that either. Another indicator of just how serious we are about addressing the problem with everything at our disposal.

Takes way too long (just look at Olkiluoto 3, Flamanville 3, Hinkley Point, Vogtle, etc etc). Solar and wind rollout is massively parallelizable and can come online in increments in pretty short timeframes.

We can add solar and wind while we build nuclear. If you think we are going to solve the problem in the short run you are dreaming. Start building nuclear or it will even take longer as we struggle with the limits and cost. of intermittence. They'll just plan gas for reliable generation instead.

Carbon capture is a fantasy - invented by the extraction industries to try to keep business as usual going.To work, the energy required to convert carbon dioxide into something else must be very much less than the energy generated by burning the carbon compounds in the first place. Nobody so far has demonstrated a working cycle.

We need to start building nuclear too, but we aren't doing that either. Another indicator of just how serious we are about addressing the problem with everything at our disposal.

Takes way too long (just look at Olkiluoto 3, Flamanville 3, Hinkley Point, Vogtle, etc etc). Solar and wind rollout is massively parallelizable and can come online in increments in pretty short timeframes.

We can add solar and wind while we build nuclear. If you think we are going to solve the problem in the short run you are dreaming. Start building nuclear or it will even take longer as we struggle with the limits and cost. of intermittence.

Even under the optimistic assumptions of the nuclear power industry, the capital costs of the plants are enormous. And, of course, historically those cost estimates have been low by a factor of two or more. How many GWh of batteries, even at current prices, can you build for the cost of one new reactor?

(Answer: several. Current estimates for costs for large-scale battery banks are less than $0.20 per W-hr, so a billion dollar reactor complex costs about as much as 5 GWhr of batteries, and the latter are only getting cheaper every year. That’s a lot of capacity for shifting solar capacity into the evening etc. )

We need to start building nuclear too, but we aren't doing that either. Another indicator of just how serious we are about addressing the problem with everything at our disposal.

The problem is Nuclear power in its current form does present real dangers to local residents, just look at Fukushima. Other renewables, not so much.

But fusion reactors or Thorium fission reactors would be great.

FFS, it's not the KIND that's the problem (well, in part yes, but not the way you think). It's the timeline.

Getting a full scale Fukushima plant up and running will take 10-25 years. We can get enough renewables up and running in that time frame to cover the output of the single Fukushima plant, scaling as we go, with less overall cost in the long-run (considering environmental impact statements, locations, labor and material costs, operational and fuel costs, maintenance, spent fuel storage costs and other major issues with ANY nuclear plant).

MSR's are fine, but we can do about as much with renewables, assuming we put in that effort.

Of course, it won't matter, because the one elephant in the room that isn't being mentioned is that the tipping point to be able to mitigate climate change through reduction of emissions is almost certainly behind us. In looking at the evidence based on my previous post, things are not only speeding up, but speeding up at rates that have climate scientists all but pissing themselves.

Canadian permafrost over the last 5 years is melting at a rate not expected to be seen for 75 YEARS. The antarctic saw record LOW ice formation a year after record HIGH ice formation. Glaciers globally are disappearing far faster than experts predicted. There was record sea level rise in the last couple of years. Storms are considerably stronger than ever before. Heat waves happen more often, are longer and hotter.

It didn't all happen overnight, but it does point to tangible changes in even less than a blink of geological time. I'd hazard to say that anyone digging through future Earths' history would wonder where the fuck the crater is that caused the mass extinction event we're in the middle of RIGHT NOW.

It's no longer hyperbole to give serious consideration to the likelihood that mankind will go extinct along with the vast majority of life currently on the planet. Not necessarily BECAUSE of climate change (though that risk due to disease and starvation is rising with every additional risk factor becoming real), but because humanity can't get along with each other long enough to face a global threat without our tribalism getting all up our asses and making us fight over diminishing resources amid growing population pressures.

Look at the refugee issue today. Add about 5 or 6 billion people to it when their homes are no longer on land or have become uninhabitable due to prolonged, lethal heat waves.

We need to focus on adaptation, now, yesterday, hell last decade, if we're going to survive. Renewables have the benefit of being cheap and mobile compared to nuke plants, regardless of kind. When the climate changes ENOUGH that wind has to be moved, or land where a nuke plant is built is under water, it's going to be faster to move the windmills than the nuke plants.

If civilization doesn't fall, maybe nuke plants will have a future. But as things stand now, there probably isn't enough time left to bring them online before things go to shit if we don't focus on adaptation and continue to cleave to the mirage that mitigation will help. The money tied up in a nuke plant can be better spent in adaptation efforts while spending a lot less money on renewables as demand increases.

There comes a time when one has to stop bailing, and start swimming. If one doesn't know how to swim in the first place, they're doomed. We as a civilization need swimming lessons, because bailing doesn't look like it's going to save the ship.

Never going to happen. We'll leave 2°C in the dust as we race towards a much higher number. How high? I betting 4-5°C by the end of the decade. People in the developing nations want what the people in the developed nations have. And people in the developed nations either don't believe anything bad is happening, aren't willing to make any sacrifice or change in lifestyle to limit the problem and a large percentage of the population just doesn't care.

We need to start building nuclear too, but we aren't doing that either. Another indicator of just how serious we are about addressing the problem with everything at our disposal.

Takes way too long (just look at Olkiluoto 3, Flamanville 3, Hinkley Point, Vogtle, etc etc). Solar and wind rollout is massively parallelizable and can come online in increments in pretty short timeframes.

We can add solar and wind while we build nuclear. If you think we are going to solve the problem in the short run you are dreaming. Start building nuclear or it will even take longer as we struggle with the limits and cost. of intermittence.

Even under the optimistic assumptions of the nuclear power industry, the capital costs of the plants are enormous. And, of course, historically those cost estimates have been low by a factor of two or more. How many GWh of batteries, even at current prices, can you build for the cost of one new reactor?

(Answer: several. Current estimates for costs for large-scale battery banks are less than $0.20 per W-hr, so a billion dollar reactor complex costs about as much as 5 GWhr of batteries, and the latter are only getting cheaper every year. That’s a lot of capacity for shifting solar capacity into the evening etc. )

Comparing per kwh costs of batteries to generation belies your misunderstanding of those economics. Batteries are not generators. Batteries are cost ON TOP OF, not instead of generation. Batteries double in cost if you double the reserve time.

And, unless you are avoiding curtailment, you are not shift solar capacity

The point is that the cost of new generating capacity for solar or wind is tiny compared to nuclear (like a quarter or less). So, if you want round the clock clean power, your costs are dominated by the large-scale battery banks needed to shift the energy from day to night (for solar production). And if the cost of the reactor would instead buy enough batteries to keep several hundred megawatts of load running all night long plus the solar field needed to both charge said battery bank and supply load during the day, what exactly is the case for the reactor?

The point is that the cost of new generating capacity for solar or wind is tiny compared to nuclear (like a quarter or less). So, if you want round the clock clean power, your costs are dominated by the large-scale battery banks needed to shift the energy from day to night (for solar production). And if the cost of the reactor would instead buy enough batteries to keep several hundred megawatts of load running all night long plus the solar field needed to both charge said battery bank and supply load during the day, what exactly is the case for the reactor?

The other thing that's been missed due to the incredible plunge in photovoltaic prices is that the cost of concentrating solar power, which can deliver around the clock, has dropped to the point where it's similar to offshore wind. In the states, that should mean it will cross paths with nuclear within the next five years unless the trend reverses.

We need to start building nuclear too, but we aren't doing that either. Another indicator of just how serious we are about addressing the problem with everything at our disposal.

The trouble seems to be that you can have safe nuclear power or you can have affordable nuclear power but you can't have safe and affordable nuclear power.

The major reason for nobody really wanting to touch nuclear power anymore is that as a business it's dead in the water. Without massive subsidies (including indirect ones like just ignoring the costs of waste disposal and decommissioning for the time being or not having any insurance) nuclear is much too expensive compared to renewables. Yes, there are interesting ideas and reactor designs floating around but nobody wants to really do the R&D and build them without being fed taxpayer money by the ladle.

The other thing that's been missed due to the incredible plunge in photovoltaic prices is that the cost of concentrating solar power, which can deliver around the clock, has dropped to the point where it's similar to offshore wind. In the states, that should mean it will cross paths with nuclear within the next five years unless the trend reverses.

They still need to be proven that they can reliably deliver around the clock. The largest such system in the US, Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, is 110 MW with 1.1 GWh of storage. But its electricity generation since commissioning has been anything but reliable.

The other thing that's been missed due to the incredible plunge in photovoltaic prices is that the cost of concentrating solar power, which can deliver around the clock, has dropped to the point where it's similar to offshore wind. In the states, that should mean it will cross paths with nuclear within the next five years unless the trend reverses.

They still need to be proven that they can reliably deliver around the clock. The largest such system in the US, Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, is 110 MW with 1.1 GWh of storage. But its electricity generation since commissioning has been anything but reliable.

We need to start building nuclear too, but we aren't doing that either. Another indicator of just how serious we are about addressing the problem with everything at our disposal.

I'm generally for nuclear. I'm very much a "Damn the economics! This is important!" kind of guy. What else is government for if not spending amounts of money the private sector would balk at on projects that need to get done.

Except that a big problem with nuclear, is that even if we threw tons of money at it, we probably don't have expertise to actually get them done in time properly anyway. Look at all those stories of those plants being built where the contractors kept fucking it up. Sure, things would have been different if we hadn't swerved away from nukes decades ago, but, we are where we are now.

Lets just throw a shitton of money and people at solar and wind, we seem to be able to do that.

France went over %90 nuclear in a about a decade, building over 50 reactors. Once you standardize and mass-produce, it becomes cheap and quick

We need to start building nuclear too, but we aren't doing that either. Another indicator of just how serious we are about addressing the problem with everything at our disposal.

The trouble seems to be that you can have safe nuclear power or you can have affordable nuclear power but you can't have safe and affordable nuclear power.

The major reason for nobody really wanting to touch nuclear power anymore is that as a business it's dead in the water. Without massive subsidies (including indirect ones like just ignoring the costs of waste disposal and decommissioning for the time being or not having any insurance) nuclear is much too expensive compared to renewables. Yes, there are interesting ideas and reactor designs floating around but nobody wants to really do the R&D and build them without being fed taxpayer money by the ladle.

We need to start building nuclear too, but we aren't doing that either. Another indicator of just how serious we are about addressing the problem with everything at our disposal.

The trouble seems to be that you can have safe nuclear power or you can have affordable nuclear power but you can't have safe and affordable nuclear power.

The major reason for nobody really wanting to touch nuclear power anymore is that as a business it's dead in the water. Without massive subsidies (including indirect ones like just ignoring the costs of waste disposal and decommissioning for the time being or not having any insurance) nuclear is much too expensive compared to renewables. Yes, there are interesting ideas and reactor designs floating around but nobody wants to really do the R&D and build them without being fed taxpayer money by the ladle.

We need to start building nuclear too, but we aren't doing that either. Another indicator of just how serious we are about addressing the problem with everything at our disposal.

The trouble seems to be that you can have safe nuclear power or you can have affordable nuclear power but you can't have safe and affordable nuclear power.

The major reason for nobody really wanting to touch nuclear power anymore is that as a business it's dead in the water. Without massive subsidies (including indirect ones like just ignoring the costs of waste disposal and decommissioning for the time being or not having any insurance) nuclear is much too expensive compared to renewables. Yes, there are interesting ideas and reactor designs floating around but nobody wants to really do the R&D and build them without being fed taxpayer money by the ladle.

We need to start building nuclear too, but we aren't doing that either. Another indicator of just how serious we are about addressing the problem with everything at our disposal.

The trouble seems to be that you can have safe nuclear power or you can have affordable nuclear power but you can't have safe and affordable nuclear power.

The major reason for nobody really wanting to touch nuclear power anymore is that as a business it's dead in the water. Without massive subsidies (including indirect ones like just ignoring the costs of waste disposal and decommissioning for the time being or not having any insurance) nuclear is much too expensive compared to renewables. Yes, there are interesting ideas and reactor designs floating around but nobody wants to really do the R&D and build them without being fed taxpayer money by the ladle.

France has safe and cheap Nuclear energy.

Safe yes. Not cheap.

You are not aware of France's electrical prices? Maybe check then report back.

We need to start building nuclear too, but we aren't doing that either. Another indicator of just how serious we are about addressing the problem with everything at our disposal.

The trouble seems to be that you can have safe nuclear power or you can have affordable nuclear power but you can't have safe and affordable nuclear power.

The major reason for nobody really wanting to touch nuclear power anymore is that as a business it's dead in the water. Without massive subsidies (including indirect ones like just ignoring the costs of waste disposal and decommissioning for the time being or not having any insurance) nuclear is much too expensive compared to renewables. Yes, there are interesting ideas and reactor designs floating around but nobody wants to really do the R&D and build them without being fed taxpayer money by the ladle.

France has safe and cheap Nuclear energy.

Safe yes. Not cheap.

France has some of the cheapest electricity rates in Europe

If you don’t pay construction and decommissioning costs, nuclear power is pretty cheap.

Last 7 Candu's, #20 to 26 were built on time in 4 years and less and on budget in under $2.7/watt average in $2019. China and Korea approach that record.

Maybe American's that can't seem to be able to build anything out of concrete these days without massive overruns should ask how? Corruption? Incompetence? New high speed rail costs are 7 times what it costs to build them Europe.

Congress seems to asking why these days.

Factory built SMR startup Nuscale thinks it can do it for $4.2/watt for 2026 service.

That said public power Energy Northwest could contract with Korea to duplicate its UAE turnkey project at Satsop $3.5/watt, 4 cents a kWh - no American's allowed on site.

Currently the cheapest storage envisioned to cover the 16 weeks necessary to allow for wind/solar to survive over every now and then extreme weather events is running $50/kWh - works out to as bad as $3/kWh added to your power bill. Impossible?

Lookup "deep decarbonization of the electric power sector insights from recent literature"

Last 7 Candu's, #20 to 26 were built on time in 4 years and less and on budget in under $2.7/watt average in $2019. China and Korea approach that record.

Maybe American's that can't seem to be able to build anything out of concrete these days without massive overruns should ask how? Corruption? Incompetence? New high speed rail costs are 7 times what it costs to build them Europe.

Factory built SMR startup Nuscale thinks it can do it for $4.2/watt for 2026 service.

Congress seems to asking why these days.

That said public power Energy Northwest could contract with Korea to duplicate its UAE turnkey project at Satsop $3.5/watt, 4 cents a kWh - no American's allowed on site.

Currently the cheapest storage envisioned to cover the 16 weeks necessary to allow for wind/solar to survive over every now and then extreme weather events is running $50/kWh - works out to as bad as $3/kWh added to your power bill. Impossible?

Lookup "deep decarbonization of the electric power sector insights from recent literature"

The problem is Nuclear power in its current form does present real dangers to local residents, just look at Fukushima. Other renewables, not so much.

But fusion reactors or Thorium fission reactors would be great.

FFS, it's not the KIND that's the problem (well, in part yes, but not the way you think). It's the timeline.

Getting a full scale Fukushima plant up and running will take 10-25 years. We can get enough renewables up and running in that time frame to cover the output of the single Fukushima plant, scaling as we go, with less overall cost in the long-run (considering environmental impact statements, locations, labor and material costs, operational and fuel costs, maintenance, spent fuel storage costs and other major issues with ANY nuclear plant).

MSR's are fine, but we can do about as much with renewables, assuming we put in that effort.

MSRs aren't actually a viable tech on any timescale that doesn't leave us broiling at well above +2C. We've zero experience with actually building or running one. If we were to launch a crash R&D program, we might have the first experimental sub-grid scale reactors running in laboratory conditions within a decade (2030). After a decade of learning how to safely operate them (2040) and assuming nothing went wrong to require major design changes we might be able to start building the first grid-scale prototypes, which is another decade gone by (2050). No one is going to be willing to start funding the construction of large numbers of them until they've demonstrated that they can be built on time and run reasonably well, so add another decade for them to prove themselves (2060) and then one more for mass production plants to begin operating in large numbers (2070). That's too late, either we've already massively cut emissions by other means of power generation already, or we're screwed.

If wind/solar costs hadn't fallen as fast as they have, and we were building a large wave of generation 3.5 design reactors; then I'd be in favor of pushing R&D hard because MSRs have the potential to be a lot safer.

As it is, the only Gen IV concept I'm really interested in pushing R&D on are fast fission reactors; less for their power generation capacity than for their ability to burn down spent fuel from conventional nuclear reactors and turn a 10k-20k year storage problem into a 500-1000 year problem.